Thickness of Blood
by LadySilver
Summary: When Stephen and Oliver discover that secrets run in the family, they also learn that there's more than one way to fight a war.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: The new _Tomorrow People _will be premiering in October on Wednesdays, following _Arrow_. Since the stars of the two shows are real life cousins, I figured that a crossover where their characters were also cousins was inevitable. Then htbthomas and tptigger egged me into starting one. Thanks to htbthomas for the brainstorming and early comments, as well._

_All we know about the new TP for sure is what's decipherable from the ads, previews, and what was provided in an early draft of the pilot script. As such, most of the details of how the characters' powers work and what their relationships are to and amongst each other are made up for this story, based a great deal on the original 1973 TP. **There are spoilers for the show included.**__No doubt it'll all be Jossed when the show actually premieres. Until then, thank you for reading and humoring me. Questions, comments, observations, concrit, squee, etc. are all welcomed and appreciated._

The Thickness of Blood

The problem was not that Stephen couldn't escape; the problem was that escaping would lead to _far _greater danger later. They had captured him because they thought they knew what he could do. He couldn't prove them right.

With the echo of the door slamming still ringing through the room, Stephen struggled against the bonds that locked his wrists and feet together. He was hog-tied, and only a few minutes of being wrenched into that position had his nerves sending warning sparks of pain through his limbs and his back threatening to never forgive him.

His cheek still throbbed from the back-hand blow his masked captor had delivered, and fear gripped his whole body. All his captor had told him was that Stephen needed to do nothing more than cooperate—though he refused to answer Stephen's frantic questions about what that cooperation would entail.

The captor's thoughts, on the other hand, gave away a lot more: They were looking for a Tomorrow Person. They knew about Stephen's father and knew that Stephen _might _be one—had the mental illness history that pointed in that direction. They just didn't know for sure if he was.

The fact that Stephen was Moira Queen's nephew—albeit from the poor side of the family—was merely a pleasant surprise.

The concrete floor was cold and hard under him, the room around him colder and damp. The building smelled of mildew and neglect, and had the air of a place that had been abandoned before it was ever used.

[Stephen, where are you?] John's telepathic send appeared in Stephen's mind less as the words that made up the question and more as the concern and suspicion behind it. Not bad for someone _thinking_ at him from the other side of the country.

"Can't-" he started, then cut himself off. Can't talk, can't move, can't respond.

The guard at the single door out of this room shifted his stance, the gun cradled in his arms the centerpiece of his position. The guard was a tall, thickly built white man with thinning brown hair and hard eyes. Though Stephen wasn't the mind-reader Cara was, he could read the man's thoughts clearly: Shoot if you see anything out of the ordinary.

Stephen figured that appearing to talk to himself would definitely count as "out of the ordinary." He offered the guard a conciliatory smile. They were already well past the point in their short relationship where Stephen demanded answers and begged for mercy and the guard stoically ignored him

As expected, the guard's only response was to blink. Once.

[Stephen, are you in trouble?] Cara interjected, her voice even clearer in his mind. Her stronger-than-typical talent for mind-reading made her telepathy easier to understand than any of the others'. With her in the link, it also meant that he didn't have to speak out loud to make himself heard back.

[Nothing I can't handle,] he answered, adding a quick mental picture of his situation. John and Cara's worry bloomed bright in his mind. He tipped his chin down and wiggled his body like it would help get some circulation to his arms. In truth, the movement was meant to disguise any expressions he was unable to keep off his face. [Don't worry about me.]

[You've been captured,] Cara pointed out. Then added, with a lilt that Stephen could easily visualize as an eyeroll, a sarcastic, [Again.]

[I know. I'm handling it.] Sort of, he added to himself. So much sort of. The bonds were pulled tight, leaving Stephen with only the ability to scoot in short bursts across the floor, which he really had no desire to do considering the gun pointed at him. [Stay where you are,] he insisted. The last thing he needed was Cara or John teleporting in. If his captors needed proof of Stephen's powers, his new friends' sudden appearances in a locked, guarded room would be more than enough. [I mean it. I have a plan.]

[No you don't,] Cara responded.

Stephen had to fight to not let his head drop back in exasperation. Of course she would have seen right through his lie. She had tried to explain to him that telepathy wasn't just mind-to-mind speech, but he'd never had the need before to test whether he could lie that way. So, it turned out he couldn't. Noted.

[Are you sure you don't need help?] John asked.

Stephen had to mull that over for a moment. The truth was, he did need help. But the help his fellow Tomorrow People had to offer was the wrong kind. Unfortunately, the only other plan he had was to sit tight and hope his captors would convince themselves that they were wrong and would let him go.

He refused to consider that they could just kill him when they got bored.

Maybe being related to a bunch of billionaires would finally be of some use to him.

[I'm sure,] he answered, at last. A twist of his shoulders sent him tumbling onto his side with a loud _oomph_. The scant protection his jeans and hoodie offered against the chill of the air would not save him from a giant bruise on his shoulder. "I'm fine," he called out loud. "Probably gonna be sore for a couple days, and..." He trailed off when the guard took a threatening step closer to him.

The guard's boots thumped heavily on the floor in that one step, ringing through the room. His expression was set hard, unamused. He didn't have to move the gun for its presence to be re-announced.

Stephen shuddered.

There was a moment of silence and then John came back, worry and resignation lacing through his response, but no fight. [Fine.] There was a flash of something too fast for Stephen to make out. It felt like the kinetic force of a rubber-band snapping in his mind, leaving the residual feeling that John knew a lot more than he was letting on. [We'll play it your way. Shout when you need to be rescued.]

With that, John cut off the link amongst them.

The thoughts of the guard, and the dozens of other people in the building, raced in to fill the absence. His powers were still too new, too raw, to make sense of the ricochets of thought-noise like a radio being turned on and off. The noise had him gritting his teeth and wishing he could do more than bide his time.

The lights went out with a flicker and a soft pop.

Stephen stopped moving. Physically. He tried to concentrate, to cast open his mind and focus in on the thoughts surrounding him. To figure out what was going on. Static-like bursts of panic and fear flickered across his mind, but he couldn't grab any of them long enough to figure out what they were about. He felt sweat break out across his forehead and the chill of the floor creep up through his skin.

"What are you doing?" the gunman demanded. He aimed his gun at Stephen, but didn't pull the trigger. Not yet, anyway. Soft light still filtered in through the dirt encrusted windows that lined the far wall of the room. It was enough to see by, if not enough for comfort.

"It's not me," Stephen replied. "I didn't do it!" He wanted to point out that the light switch was next to the door, and he very much was not, but he managed to bite back the sarcasm before it got him shot. He tucked himself into the smallest ball he could given how he was tied, and reached for the part of his mind that would let him teleport.

The door slammed open. The gunman turned and unleashed a shot into the hallway. A soft _thwip _interrupted a second try. He hit the ground with a thunk, his form distorted with what looked like a stick poking out of his chest. His gun clattered uselessly next to his still form.

Stephen shut his eyes then and forced himself to breathe. One thought came clearly to his mind: rescue.

A tall, shrouded figure entered the room, a bow in his hands.

Stephen's breath was sucked out of him. He'd had heard about this guy, the vigilante. Everyone in Starling City knew of him and spoke about him, their opinions strong and often trapped between fearful and appreciative. At first, Stephen had thought it was some kind of practical joke being played on him and Luca, his brother, the poor schlubs visiting from out-of-town and in need of a little chain yanking.

And then he'd turned on the local news and discovered that the vigilante was no joke. On screen, he was an imposing figure, if grainy security film and police sketches were anything to go by: Tall and broad shouldered, and always keeping his face obscured under a green hood.

In person, he was all that and _more_. The intensity of his thoughts struck Stephen like a physical blow, rocking him backward. Stephen's tongue darted over his dry, cracked lips as he processed the impossible information.

The last time the Jamesons had been to Starling City was for his Uncle Robert and cousin Oliver's funeral. The last time Stephen had seen Oliver alive, he'd been barely eight years old and far more interested in exploring the mansion than in spending time with a stuck-up cousin who was more than twice his age. Seeing Oliver again after so long came with the expectation of physical changes, especially after what Oliver had been through. The biggest surprise there was how much Stephen had closed the gap in their heights.

The real shock had been how Oliver's mind felt. The focus and determination in it was unlike anything Stephen had encountered, even in his uncle Jedikiah, who was the most determined person he'd ever met—up until walking into the Queen household and discovering what a calling truly felt like.

"Are you OK?" the vigilante growled. His voice was deep and synthesized, not at all like Oliver's, which Stephen figured had to be the point. It also sounded dangerous. If he didn't already know he was safe with this guy, he'd be flinging him across the room with the full force of his telekinesis.

"I'm fine," Stephen replied, surprised at how different it felt to say it this time. He tried to jiggle his arms to show why he wasn't contributing to his own escape, and realized in that moment that he'd stopped feeling them a long time ago. Only the ache of wrenched muscles through his shoulders let him know that he hadn't completely disassociated from his body.

"I'm going to get you out of here," the vigilante stated. "Hold still." Keeping his face carefully averted, and his bow held in ready position, he crossed the room to where Stephen sat. He crouched in front of him, head bowed so that all Stephen could clearly see was the top of his hood and the quiver of arrows strapped to his back. Then he made a strange twisting gesture with one hand. Only as the plastic ties hit the floor with dull clinks did Stephen realize that the bonds had been cut away. He still couldn't feel any of his limbs; he was shaking his head 'no' before the man even finished asking, "Can you stand?"

"My legs are asleep," he explained. "So are my arms." He tried to move this legs, get them straightened out for the first time in how knew how long. A telekinetic push helped, though he could tell from the complete lack of sensation that it was going to be awhile before he'd be able to put any weight on them. He suspected they didn't have awhile. People were racing through other parts of the building, their panic and anger palpable to him.

They were going to be here soon. Even if the vigilante's arrows would be enough against the guns, Stephen couldn't let him use them.

And if he didn't, they were both going to get shot.

Stephen's eye landed on the open door then and traveled down to the fallen gunman. The door was unguarded, and the others in the building were only starting to regroup. They had maybe a minute, which wasn't enough time for his limbs to recover, but was more than enough for other methods of egress. "Shoot one of the windows," he ordered, tipping a chin in the direction of the dirtied glass on the wall across from them.

"Why?" the vigilante asked. Through the shadows cast on his face by the hood, his stubbled-jaw tensed.

"To throw them off," Stephen replied. He took a deep breath and let it out as the first painful tingles of reawakening nerves began to prickle around his feet. He couldn't keep the grimace of pain off his face or out of his voice.

The vigilante hesitated for only a second before drawing an arrow from his quiver and loosing it at a window. On impact, the glass shattered and rained to the floor in large shards that hit the concrete and shattered further. Bright light flooded into the room, a stark contrast to the artificial twilight that had filled it before. "Now what?"

"Help me stand up," Stephen replied. He was ages away from being able to succeed at that task, but that didn't matter for what he really wanted to do.

The vigilante listened for a long second to the commotion of people running up stairs, the slam and clang of doors, of feet on metal. "We have to move fast," he said.

Stephen allowed a small smile to quirk his lips. "Faster than light," he replied.

His still-dead arm was no sooner wrapped around the vigilante's shoulder, when he closed his eyes, found his center, and teleported.

Stephen was still new at this whole having-powers thing, which meant that there were a lot of specifics to the skills that he hadn't worked out yet: like how to choose a destination when teleporting outside of line-of-sight. This time that meant that they landed in his bedroom—correction, the guestroom in which he was staying—at the Queen mansion. Stephen promptly fell backward onto the bed, a grunt escaping his lips as his arms chose that moment to come back to life.

The vigilante stumbled as the surface changed beneath his feet, though he found his new footing quickly. He had an arrow nocked in his bow and pointed at Stephen before the flash from the teleport faded. "What did you do? Where are we?"

Stephen sighed. The bedding beneath him was soft and inviting, especially after the hard floor he'd been sitting on. The sudden urge to curl up and go to sleep swept through him, though having an arrow pointed at his chest did make it easier to resist. "I guess we have a lot of catching up to do." A beat, and then he added the hook, "Oliver."

The string on the bow tightened just a fraction more, and Stephen instinctively reached for his powers again, though the close distance between him and the weapon pointed at him made it unlikely that he'd have even the reaction time to use them. The best he could hope for was to knock the arrow aside so that the only thing it hit was the mattress.

"Take me back," the vigilante ordered. "Right now!"

"I can't," Stephen answered, low, resolute. It wasn't an issue of knowing the location. He knew that room better than he'd ever wanted to know a room. The issue was what would happen if he followed the direction. People would die, and it didn't matter if they deserved it, Stephen couldn't be responsible for it happening. Not didn't want to. _Couldn't. _Tomorrow People can't kill, he remembered Cara explaining, and now he was beginning to understand how much that could limit his otherwise immense powers.

"Do it!"

"I _can't!" _Stephen shouted, forcing himself up on wobbly elbows. Anything to make his cousin take his words more seriously.

The bow lowered then, the arrow rejoining its mates in the quiver. "Stay here!" Without another word, the vigilante crossed to the window, opened it. He pushed the storm screen out and had himself through the aperture in record time, leaving only the curtains to drift in the new breeze.

Stephen dropped back onto the bed, all energy suddenly sucked out of him. His heart thudded in his chest, his breathing came ragged and rapid. All he could do for a long time was stare at the ceiling, not even a clear thought in his head except the image of the sharp point of the arrow that had been aimed at him and the sharper focus in his cousin's mind about how easily he would have been able to use it.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time Oliver got back to the abandoned building—part of an industrial park that had filed for bankruptcy two years before—the evidence of the kidnapping was gone. He sensed the absolute emptiness before he got close enough to confirm it, yet proceeded slowly and cautiously across the cracked and weed-infested parking lot just in case.

The building was low and wide with a truck unloading zone dominating the far side. It had probably been intended to be a distribution center, which gave a lot of open warehouse space and a small selection of offices—a structure that had made it a lot easier to find his cousin. On the third floor sat the shattered window of the office in which Stephen had been held.

Oliver pressed himself against the wall beneath that window and listened carefully. Wind whistled through the open window, carrying the distant calls of birds and traffic. He heard no talking, no footsteps. That absence raised his hackles more than any number of armed guards could have.

With his guard up and his bow at the ready, Oliver slid around the side of the building to the back entrance that he had broken into earlier. The handle was still broken, door still hanging open onto the dim, dusty interior. Once again, Oliver entered the building and began to move through the rooms, searching each in turn. There were signs that others had been present recently: scuff marks on the floor, smudges on doorknobs from hastily wiped away fingerprints, a stray potato chip bag that had blown into a corner, a dark smear in the third floor room from the guard he'd felled. He caught traces of a variety of colognes and scented soaps, the heavy odor of a smoked cigarette. The people who had made these marks were all gone.

Returning once again to the third floor room, Oliver inspected it for any clues that might have been overlooked. Besides the now-dried smear and the shattered window, the room had nothing to offer.

"What do you have for me, Felicity?" he asked, flicking on the transmitter for his earpiece that connected him to HQ.

"Oh my God, Oliver?" Felicity's voice came frantic and high-pitched over the connection. "Are you OK? Where are you? The tracker in your boot glitched and we thought-"

"I'm fine. Stephen's fine-"_ For now_, Oliver added to himself. "-And all the bad guys have cleared out. Something's wrong here."

"I'm still running the traces on the ransom call. I keep hitting dead-ends."

"Try researching Stephen."

The line went silent for a second and then Oliver heard the clattering of keys, another pause, then a blown-out breath of frustration. "J-A-M-E-S-O-N?" Felicity asked, spelling the surname.

"Yes."

"Found him." She dropped into silence, no doubt reading the entry over. Arriving at a conclusion didn't take long. "He's just a typical kid. Well, not so typical. He looks like he's kind of a loner. Facebook profile. Only a couple dozen friends, all of them classmates. He's not tagged in any photos except his profile picture. Twitter. Only three followers and fewer than a half-dozen tweets. One mention on his school's website for participation in an AIDS fundraiser. If he's hiding anything, he's- Oh."

"Oh? Felicity? What's 'oh'?"

"He has some interesting notes on his permanent record. Lots of absences and truancy."

Oliver thought back to his own time in high school and how little of it he managed to spend in class. Teenage Oliver had no difficulty devising better ways to spend his time and his money than sitting in an over-priced classroom. "That doesn't sound unusual. Everyone cuts classes here and there."

"I didn't," Felicity corrected.

"Let me guess: You got the perfect attendance award."

"Well, no," she amended with a huff of indignation. "Senior Skip Day, everyone cut except for me. I just knew that Stacy was never going to let me live it down. 'Flawless Felicity' she used to call me, like _that's _an insult. Anyway, I hacked the attendance to show that I skipped...and...um...We were talking about Stephen's attendance, not mine. His record notes that he had problems with inattentiveness, inappropriate outbursts, talking to himself, and..." Oliver could practically see her pushing her glasses back into place. "...hearing voices."

"Drugs?"

The keys clacked again. "Only legal ones. Lots of them, too. It looks like he was a regular at the mental hospital. That's strange..."

"What?"

"Thorazine, Haldol, Amisulpride... They're all anti-psychotics. It's an impressive list, too and the doctors keep changing his prescription." She dropped into the silence of someone who had been caught up in her reading and had forgotten that anyone was listening to her.

Oliver cleared his throat. "Felicity, what does that mean?"

"What? Oh! It probably means that the drugs weren't working."

Oliver mulled this over. He crossed to where Stephen had been tied up, and crouched down. His eyes traced around the room, taking in the doorway and the play of dust particles in the sunlight from the broken window. Though it shouldn't have been, the electricity had been on in the building, lights in all the sockets and working, which indicated that people had intended to use the place for some time. The kidnapping had been in broad daylight, as had been the rescue. Oliver normally would have waited for darkness, but the ransom demand that Felicity intercepted hadn't given that option.

Yet, in the end, Stephen was the one who had taken both of them from the building. Somehow. Stephen could have rescued himself at any time. So, why hadn't he?

The sound of an approaching car engine interrupted Oliver's analysis. Glancing out the broken window—careful to conceal himself as he did—he spotted a police car rolling across the parking lot. His motorcycle was out there. Correction: motorcycles. He'd had to bring a second one to get here the second time, and now both were parked in the lot below. While he'd done his best to park them out of the way, the lot had been designed to be a wide open, well-lit space, which made hiding anything in it impossible. From the angle the police car was approaching, it was clear that the officer had seen the bikes.

Oliver made his decision quickly. Slipping out of the room and down the hall, he pulled off his hood and gauntlets as he ran. He ducked into the nearest restroom, spotting in one glance the single, partially used roll of toilet paper resting on the back of the stool, the thin stack of brown paper towels on the back of the sink, and the smudges of liquid soap and toothpaste in the sink. For the first time, he took some satisfaction in being right about how the building had been used.

He pitched his hood and gloves into the corner and stripped off all the other incriminating pieces of Hood gear, adding them to the pile. Being daytime, he hadn't put the makeup on his eyes, for which he was now grateful. A quick splash of water on his face and a yank on his shirt to smooth out any creases from being under his uniform, and the Hood was exchanged for Oliver Queen, businessman.

Oliver strode downstairs and out into the desolate parking lot, where the police car was now parked next to his bikes. The dark-haired officer had gotten out and was squatted behind one of the bikes, writing down the plates. He stood up when Oliver appeared, a scowl plastered across his face.

Oliver blanched as he got a clear look at the officer's face. "Detective."

"Now why am I not surprised to find you some place you're not supposed to be?" Detective Lance answered.

Oliver glanced around the desolated parking lot then down at his watch. "What brings you out here?"

"Someone reported suspicious activity out here. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Lance challenged. His tone made it clear that he thought he'd caught Oliver.

With a roll of his head toward the building behind him, Oliver answered, "I haven't seen anything suspicious. I've been here for the last hour inspecting this building for possible acquisition."

"Uh-huh," Lance responded, tucking his thumbs into his belt-loops.

Oliver quirked an eyebrow. "There's some minor damage from neglect." He indicated the broken window with a wave of his hand. "A few hints of vandalism and some evidence of squatters. Nothing that can't be cleaned up and fixed. It seems to me that the city would benefit from getting the building put to use rather than letting it continue to rot."

"Uh-huh," Lance repeated. "So you're only here because you're interested in bringing some jobs to Starling City?"

"What other reason would there be?" Oliver questioned. The obvious answer—that a vigilante would use an abandoned building as his base—sat like the proverbial elephant between them. "The real question is: why are you here? Isn't investigating potential vandals a little below your pay-grade?"

Lance met Oliver's question with a stony stare. "I volunteered. Figured I'd run into you here."

"Like I said, Detective, I'm here on business." For once the truth worked better than a lie.

"All by yourself?" Lance asked with a tip of his chin toward the pair of bikes.

Oliver swallowed, his mind skittering through possible scenarios for how to explain why two motorcycles, both registered in his name, could be in the same parking lot.

"Oliver? You ready to go?" a new voice called.

Oliver and Quentin swiveled at the same time to see Stephen coming out the busted door. His brown hair was mussed and he walked with a slight limp, but otherwise seemed no worse for wear.

Turning back to the detective, Oliver allowed a smile to pass over his lips. "This is my cousin, Stephen," he introduced, as Stephen joined them. "Stephen, Detective Lance."

Stephen held out a hand in greeting. Lance eyed it, but didn't accept. After an awkward moment, Stephen let his hand drop again, rubbing it against the leg of his jeans.

"Queen's cousin?" he asked suspiciously.

"On our mothers' side," Stephen explained. To Oliver he added, "You said this was going to be a quick stop. Could we wrap this up? No offense, but looking at buildings is boring."

With a slow shake of his head, Lance said, "I don't know how you always slip through the loop, Queen."

"I have nothing to hide," Oliver responded, an open shrug punctuating his words.

"Then you won't mind if I take a quick look around your possible acquisition." It wasn't a question. "I wouldn't want there to be any surprises."

Oliver swept a hand out, inviting Lance to help himself. The detective stalled a second, a glance back and forth between the two men like he was waiting for them to spring the other half of the trap, then set off toward the open door.

"I'm going to wait here," Stephen called, loud enough for Lance to hear, and sounding every bit of the annoyed sixteen year old he was. Then, quieter and only for Oliver's ears, he added, "Once he's inside, I'll take care of it."

"Take care of what?"

"You know," Stephen answered. "Go. Don't let him out of your sight."

Oliver pressed his lips together and growled through his nose. So much of his life now was a tenuous juggling between one barely-trustworthy alliance and another, each time his allegiance a gamble about which side was least likely to betray him first. Here he was again, pitting the trust he didn't have in his cousin against the need to conceal his secret from the detective.

In the background, he heard the door clang against the wall. Stephen made a shooing motion, his blue eyes widening in a silent urging for Oliver to get moving. For an instant, the expression reminded Oliver of one he had seen on his own face, and the dice rolled. With sure steps, he moved to catch up with the detective, trusting that his cousin would hold up his end of their temporary partnership.

The escorted trip through the building ratcheted Oliver's nerves up to high. Adrenaline coursed through his body, his limbs quivered with the need to strike, to block, to _move_. He clenched his fists behind his back, fingernails digging into his palms, and fought to keep his surface demeanor as calm and collected as it would be if he really didn't have anything to worry about.

Lance approached each doorway, each new space, as if _this one _would be the one that would give away the whole game, and each time he walked away with his head hanging a little lower. He kept up a running commentary as he went, assessing the number and size of the offices, speculating on the amount of warehouse space and what could be stored in it. "How much do you think it'll cost to finish this place?" he asked, his eyes sweeping over the interior of one, cataloging the stain of water damage in one corner and a different, darker stain on the floor.

Oliver shrugged. He didn't have to pretend to sound bored. "That's my accountants' concern."

Lance didn't like that answer. He brushed past Oliver on his way through the stairwell door, grumbling, "Must be nice not to have to worry about money."

Outside the third floor bathroom, Lance paused again, a glint coming to his eyes as if he knew that he'd found the missing clue.

Oliver's heart thudded hard in his chest. To hide any discomfort, he glanced again at his watch. "Stephen's going to think we got lost," he commented.

"I'm sure he's fine," Lance responded. "We'll be done here in a minute." _You'll be done here in a minute_, Oliver heard. Lance pushed open the bathroom door and stuck his head in.

Over his shoulder, Oliver saw again the roll of toilet paper, the stack of paper towels, the stained sink. That was it. Every last piece of his gear was gone. For a second he worried that he'd misremembered which bathroom he'd left it all in. But, no, this was definitely the right one, and he understood that he now owed his cousin one more.

"Got some trouble with squatters?" Lance asked.

"I haven't seen anyone," Oliver responded honestly. "Whoever was here must have moved on. Probably the same person who broke the door."

Lance hummed speculatively, but for once didn't press the question. He dropped into silence for the rest of the tour, his step picking up weight. By the time he gave up and got back in his police car, his shoulders had acquired a noticeable slump and Oliver was fighting the urge to see him off with a smug "I told you so."

He watched the detective pull away, then went back one last time to jam the door shut as best as he could. Now that he'd made the alibi about buying the building, it seemed in his best interest to at least go through the motions of following through—he suspected that Detective Lance would be paying particular attention to those records—and he didn't need actual squatters moving in and creating more damage before he did.

"I took the gear back to the house," Stephen said, coming up behind him. "Hope that's OK. I didn't know-"

Oliver spun around and pushed his cousin into the wall, pressing his forearm tight against the younger boy's chest. The four inches height he had on him became critical leverage. "I thought you said you couldn't come back here."

The attack had knocked Stephen's wind out of him, and the hold prevented him from drawing in enough breath to fight back. "I couldn't," he gasped. His face was rapidly reddening from his efforts to breathe and he pulled ineffectively at Oliver's arm. His own athletic build wasn't enough against the much better trained, physically bigger, and angrier man smashing him into the wall.

"That's a lie," Oliver responded, his voice cold.

Stephen shook his head. "No. Came...back..." He stopped, the hard fought words too much effort to continue. His lids dropped closed, face relaxed. He stopped struggling.

Then he was gone.

Oliver slammed into the wall, his balance upset as what he was leaning against disappeared. Though momentarily dazed from hitting the wall, he spun around and landed in a fighter's crouch, balanced on the balls of his feet.

A dozen feet away stood Stephen, bent over at the waist and hacking for air. "Came back as soon as I could," he coughed out.

Too furious to care what kind of excuse Stephen had prepared, Oliver lunged at him.

"Stop!" Stephen croaked. He threw a hand up and Oliver went flying back against the wall again. The corrugated metal siding crumpled under the impact.

Oliver tried to right himself and found that he couldn't. A force he couldn't see prevented him from moving forward, from moving at all. He struggled against it with no success.

Slowly, Stephen collected himself. He stood up straight, breath recovered, a strength of resolution in his expression that Oliver had never seen before.

"If you'll stop trying to kill me for two seconds, I'll explain."

Oliver pushed against the force and found that it had no give, no weakness that he could exploit. He couldn't even tell what it was that was holding him, where it was coming from, how big it was. It had to be something that Stephen was doing, but Stephen was still well out of reach. Still, strain tightened Stephen's jawline and his extended hand shook like it was what held Oliver captive. Recognizing the weakness of this position, Oliver gave a slight nod of acquiescence.

Stephen lowered his hand and the invisible force ceased; Oliver dropped a few centimeters that he hadn't been aware he'd had under him, landing hard on the dirt. Stephen opened his mouth and closed it again, pulling a face as he tried to come up with what to say. Finally, he settled on, "I have powers." He rolled his eyes, tried and failed again for words, and then added, "It's a genetic thing."

Entwined disbelief and panic surged through Oliver. Powers, like the ability to travel anywhere and to throw people around without touching them, were impossible. Except that Oliver had already seen enough to know that they weren't—which made Stephen dangerous in ways that Oliver could only begin to imagine. And if they were genetic...

Stephen recoiled like he'd been punched and pressed his palm to his temple. "Don't worry. I got them from my dad."

It turned out that wasn't a relief. It did, however, make a strange kind of sense. Oliver only vaguely remembered his uncle; the man had abandoned his family when his boys were still young. What he recalled was a jittery, paranoid person who always seemed to know more than he should, which made him barely tolerable company in the best of times. And made his departure a relief.

"You have powers?" Oliver echoed. "What kind of powers?"

"Like _Jumper_." At Oliver's blank expression, he clarified, "You know, the movie?" He rolled his head as the reference went over his cousin's head. "You don't know the movie. It's about a kid who can teleport-"

Though he had spent more of his youth partying than in keeping up with the latest trends in science fiction, Oliver recognized that word. "Like _Star Trek_," he supplied. "'Beam me up, Scottie.'" He also knew that teleporting was impossible. Or, it _should _be impossible.

Stephen nodded, and Oliver found himself surprised that someone his cousin's age would get the reference. That moment was extinguished as _why _they were making these comparisons caught up with him. "Sort of," Stephen replied. "Except that was technology. Mine's part of what I am. I have. . . superpowers." He cut himself off, as if realizing that he was saying too much. "But I'm not a freaking superhero! You seem to have that role filled already."

His voice controlled, dangerous, any levity destroyed, Oliver asked, "How did you find out?"

Stephen cringed, his hand coming up like he knew that what he was going to say wasn't going to go over well. "I read your mind."


	3. Chapter 3

Though Stephen had been expecting to get attacked again, Oliver's response was the opposite: He shut down. At the confession, Oliver went completely still, his hands clenched at his sides, his mind utterly impenetrable. He stood for so long as if Stephen had frozen him in time that Stephen began to grow concerned that he had. It wouldn't be the first time he'd used his powers by accident.

Then Oliver broke free.

Without so much as a comment or a flicker of expression, Oliver stalked over to his waiting bike and peeled it out of the parking lot like he couldn't escape fast enough.

Stephen was left standing in shock, his arm still raised in a defensive position he didn't need, for a long, uncomfortable moment. A breeze tugged at the hood of his jacket and pushed a scattering of loose gravel across the parking lot, both of which he only dimly noticed as the rest of his brain worked on catching up with what had happened.

Oliver had left without him.

In his next thought, it occurred to Stephen that Oliver had left because otherwise his cousin would have killed him.

Stephen swallowed hard.

Though he'd never given more than idle consideration to whether or not he could kill someone, Stephen had always assumed that if his life were on the line, he'd be able to defend it at any cost. Since coming into his powers, he'd discovered just how wrong that assumption was. He could still contemplate killing, in the abstract way that most people tossed the word or concept around. He could still provoke, still fight, still defend. But he could not take that last step. The one time he'd been pushed close enough to try, the pain crushed him. It had ripped through his mind and body like no agony he could ever imagine. He'd nearly killed himself in the act of lashing out at another.

Oliver had no such barrier. So, he'd left. It was the only thing he could have done. But he'd left Stephen behind, in a strange city and with few resources. Fortunately, Stephen wasn't helpless.

From his vantage point in the parking lot, he could see the smudge of buildings that marked the Starling City skyline off in the distance. The sun was only beginning to paint the horizon pink, and was still hours away from fully setting. For all that he'd been through, Stephen felt like it should be late at night, or possibly well into the next week. His head suddenly felt stuffed thick with exhaustion and all he wanted was to get someplace he could go to sleep for a day or so.

Closing his eyes, he focused his mental energy, visualized his bedroom back at the Queen mansion, and teleported. There was always an instant—just an instant—right after he flipped the mental switch where he questioned whether it was going to work. Then the inrush of air tingled his skin and tightened his eardrums like on a descending plane and he _felt _the world shift.

He stumbled forward on arrival, his feet finding a hard surface not unlike the one he'd just left. The wind blew harder here, and colder. Overhead a jet screamed by.

His eyes snapped open at the wrongness. While the Queen mansion could only be qualified as _huge_, Stephen was certain that jets could not fly inside.

Good thing he wasn't afraid of heights. He'd appeared on the roof of a building. As he approached the wall that encircled the open rooftop and peered over its edge, he amended his assessment: He'd appeared on the roof of a very, very tall building. Behind him hunkered the shed-like structure that held the doorway down to the main building, rust-smattered vents and fans, and an improbable wooden bench that rested on even rustier metal supports. In front of him lay only the sharp descent to the street. At this height, he wouldn't be dead before he hit the ground, but he'd have enough time to wish that he was.

This was _not _where he had meant to teleport. This was not any place he would have _meant _to teleport to. A survey of the surrounding buildings, and another stomach-churning glance down to street level, confirmed that he had no idea where he was, though it definitely was not New York City, his home town. He couldn't even guess with any certainty what city he was in.

"God damn it!" he screamed, a well of pent-up frustration bursting inside him. He brought a foot down hard, kicking at the gravel scattered across the rooftop. Small pieces went flying, the thin noise of their landing swallowed in the thrum of the fans. The violence wasn't satisfying, wasn't enough to calm the anger at his failure to get himself someplace where he could relax, think. With more invectives spat into the sky, he kicked again and again at the gravel. Spinning around, he found a patch of weeds nosing up from a crack in roof's surface. He kicked at it once, then harder. Bits of green leaf tore off and smeared against the white rubber of his shoes.

This tiny act of destruction worked where all the gravel rearranging hadn't. Stephen came to a stop at last, panting from exertion, his eyes burning with repressed tears. Raking his fingers through his hair, he tipped his head back toward the bright blue sky and offered one more desultory swear at the day that had done nothing but go wrong. Never was he so certain that he should have stayed in bed that morning. Never had he been so eager before to get back to bed to try to forget a day.

Again summoning his power, he visualized the bedroom more carefully: the four poster bed with its dark wood, the thick carpet, the framed picture that dominated one wall of the mansion in an earlier era. The energy that churned through him this time was different, fizzing across his skin like carbonation rather than rushing over it. It felt unstable, harder to contain or control. Before he could reconsider, the mental switch flipped, folding and unfolding the space around him.

As his eyes settled on the shattered glass window in front of him, he sunk to the floor with the longest sigh of his life. He'd returned to the room where he'd been held captive. With this defeat, even the energy to swear vanished. Once again the hard cement seeped its cold through his clothes and into his flesh; the damp and mildew crawled into his nose and tickled the back of his throat.

Why was this going so wrong? He'd never heard of teleporting failing like this. Visualize and go, that's the way it worked.

"John?" he asked, his voice small in the empty room.

Nothing.

He cleared his throat—cleared his mind—and tried again. "John?"

_Each of our powers have its limits_, he remembered Cara explaining. _Just like physical powers. But they can be stretched._

And what happens when they're stretched too far, he wondered now. While teleporting a couple of times wasn't unusual, he'd also been using his telepathy and telekinesis—and all that was not counting the toll the day had taken on his body and psyche. He was pretty familiar with his physical limits; he worked out and liked to run to burn off excess energy, despite having never joined a sports team. His mental limits were a different question. The other TPs had kept telling him that his powers were stronger than theirs, that he was capable of so much more than them. Even so, no one believed that his powers were infinite. Had he finally pushed himself too far?

Some time later, before the tingling and numbness of sitting for too long in one position had the chance to take over, he pushed to his feet and stumbled back out of the building. There were no guards to stop him this time, no guns, no one to care. The trip down the hall and toward the exit felt both immensely long and unbelievably short, and he kept having to pause to review how many stairs he'd touched in fear that that he'd miss a vital one and end up going down the rest head first.

The sunlight caressed his skin and Stephen felt the tension in his shoulders ebb. He still had to squint, his eyes having fully adjusted to the darkened interior while he tried to pull himself together. The light was bright, but it didn't hurt. Instead it seemed to offer hope that he kind of desperately needed. He'd made it this far; all he had to do was get himself back to the mansion and he'd be fine.

Between faded yellow lines sat the motorcycle, beckoning to him. Oliver had left the key in the ignition—and why shouldn't he have? It wasn't like there was anyone here to steal the bike. Would Oliver even have worried about the bike being stolen? Or would he assume that he could just buy a new one?

With a shake of his head, Stephen brought himself back on task and moved to examine the vehicle. Though he'd never driven a motorcycle, he'd been on one a few times. His dad had had one, back when his dad still lived with them, when Stephen could still pretend they were a normal family.

In his mind he heard the memory of his dad's voice as he guided the young Stephen through the steps of getting the motorcycle started and moving. "Remember..." he heard, the tone so patient and encouraging. "Don't forget..." In a lapse of attentiveness, Stephen tried to reach back to that memory with his telepathy, mistaking the clearness of its presence for true mental contact. Then he remembered that his father was missing and out of contact, his own powers were on the fritz, and knowing the processof doing something was different than _doing _it.

On a practice lap around the parking lot, the front wheels of bike reared up in a sudden wheelie. Balance destabilized, Stephen and the bike toppled over. He hit the ground hard. Fortunately, he hadn't been going very fast and he had taken the time to put on the helmet. The only damage would be more bruises for his already abused body, and a painful reminder that he was never going to qualify for his driver's license if he didn't get more practice at any kind of driving.

He was still laying on the ground, the cracked asphalt digging into his exposed skin, when he heard the distinctive pop of dislocated air. Craning his head, he spotted Russell striding toward him, his face passing through a rapid series of amused expressions as he processed Stephen's predicament.

"So this is why you haven't checked in," Russell chided, barely constrained laughter in his voice. In his jean shorts, Yankee's t-shirt that set off his bronzed skin tone, a Yankee's baseball cap that covered his short, black hair, and a giant souvenir cup of soda in his hand, he looked like he'd used the seventh inning stretch to jaunt across the country just to check on Stephen. Dropping into a crouch next to the bike, he took a long slurp of his drink through the straw. "Do you want some help? Or were you planning to lay there all day?"

"What do you think?" Stephen snipped.

After another slurp and a shake of the cup that rattled the ice against the plastic sides, Russell answered, "I think that you told John you had things under control. Unless this sweet bike is named 'Control,' I also think you weren't telling the truth." He tsked, shaking his head in a mockery of disapproval. "How's John supposed to charge to the rescue if he doesn't know what's going on? Good thing for you I decided to take the initiative." His gaze drifted appreciatively over the bike with the air of an experienced appraiser. "Where did you get this from, anyway? Do you think I could take it for a spin?" Setting the drink down, he helped lift the bike up so that Stephen could slide out from underneath. When he was done he checked it over for damage—tsked again when he found a couple dings—then straddled the machine and leaned forward like he was already racing down the road.

Stephen could only roll his eyes at how Russell was more concerned about the bike than about him. "It's my cousin's," he explained, "And, no, he definitely would not be cool with you borrowing the bike." _Especially considering your track record for returning things you've 'borrowed.'_

"I heard that," Russell commented, his tone almost proud.

"Good. Then you know I meant it. Now—" He stopped, the phrase "get off the bike" just shy of his lips when a new idea occurred to him. Russell was here, Russell could get back to New York and the other TP in the blink of eye, and Russell had access to _everything. _"Do you have a phone?" He didn't waste the breath on asking Russell to teleport him back to the mansion since he already knew that he couldn't do it without having a mental touchpoint to focus on. Since he'd neither been to the mansion before nor knew anyone there, he had no touchpoint.

Russell squinted at him like he'd never heard such a strange question. The brim of the baseball cap cut a shadow across his upper face. "Why?"

Taking a moment to brush dirt from jeans that were now too dirty to make the gesture worthwhile, Stephen formulated the shortest version of the story that he could: "I need to get this-" He gestured to the bike. "-to my cousin's house back there-" and over his shoulder toward the Starling City skyline, "-and I need a GPS because I don't actually know where I am."

Russell nodded knowingly. "And you'd rather ride than teleport. I get that, Dude. Nothing wrong with doing things the old fashioned way. Are you sure you don't want me to drive, since, you know, I know how to keep upright?"

"That's funny," Stephen answered flatly. "Also, no. I'm pretty sure my cousin would kill you if he caught you touching his bike."

"Any worse than he'd kill you for scratching it up?"

Stephen flinched; he hadn't thought of that, and Oliver was already pissed at him without knowing about the damage to his bike. "I'll take my chances. Now, about that phone?"

With an melodramatic show of reluctance, Russell dismounted the motorcycle. "What's wrong with yours?"

"I lost it." Stephen sighed. What he meant was, the captors had taken it away from him. Since Oliver hadn't mentioned finding it, Stephen could only assume that he was never going to see the phone again. His mother was going to be pissed. She already had a low opinion of him from his months of erratic behavior, before he met the people who belonged to the voices in his head. "It's been a _looooong_ day."

"You know that most of us don't carry cell phones," Russell pointed out. "It's not like we need them. Plus, they're not safe."

Stephen felt a start of surprise at discovering that Russell shared a viewpoint with John. John lived in an abandoned subway station under New York City and had excellent reasons for staying as far away from the grid as possible. Many of the other TP emulated him, or at least acceded to avoiding GPS technology, out of fear of all the people—like those who had kidnapped Stephen—who wanted to find the TP. That Russell was one of them spoke to a survival instinct that Russell's surface behavior belied.

"But you can get one, right?" Stephen answered. "I only need it for a few minutes. That should be enough time to get my bearings."

Russell tipped the brim of his hat up and stared off into the distance for a long moment. Whatever thoughts were passing through his mind barely made a crease on his face and remained out of Stephen's mental grasp. At last he nodded. "I'll ask around." Picking up his cup, he once more swept an appraising eye over the motorcycle. "But it's going to cost you."

"If I get back safely, I promise I'll talk to him," Stephen agreed, understanding that the price of Russell's help was a chance at the kind of technology that people who lived in subway tunnels rarely had access to. "But if he says 'no,' then you gotta accept that. Oliver's not the kind of guy who can be pushed." As Stephen had too well learned, though he was careful to leave any specifics out of his thoughts.

"Good enough," Russell agreed. He glanced at the expensive, no doubt pilfered, watch on his wrist. "You, uh, probably don't want to wait, though. The game's not going to be over for awhile and I didn't pay good money for that ticket." Flashing a smirk, he vanished. Splatters of condensation from the cup onto the ground were all that marked his leaving.

Stephen blinked at the place where Russell had been standing. The sun was hot on his head, the smell of metal and hot asphalt acrid in his nose. Russell would be good to his word, but his warning was appreciated.

Another wave of exhaustion swept over him, blurring his vision. Rubbing his eyes cleared it, but keeping his eyes focused was taking a lot more concentration than advisable. Even if he didn't know how to find the mansion, he was certain that following the road into Starling City would at least bring him to a coffee shop. Maybe by then, Russell would come through.

Crossing his fingers that he wouldn't crash the bike again, he guided it out of the industrial park and turned onto the main road. He pointed the bike in the direction of the cluster of office buildings and high rises that marked the skyline and gave the engine an extra rev to boost his confidence.

Light traffic spotted the road which encouraged Stephen to stick to the right lane and a lower-than-posted speed limit. On the one side of the road sprawled the abandoned buildings of the industrial park and on the other thick trees and wild underbrush of a forest preserve. The scent of chlorophyl filled the air and, for a few moments, helped him forget why he was on a motorcycle in the middle of nowhere.

Red and blue lights behind him slammed him back into reality. A glance in the rearview mirror showed a police car tailing him with the lights on. The siren gave a single whoop, and Stephen eased the bike onto the shoulder, fully expecting the police car to keep driving. It didn't.

The bike stuttered against the roadway grooves that marked the boundary between lane and shoulder, clattering his teeth. Stray detritus bounced up from under the wheels and pinged off his jeans.

To his surprise, the police car pulled up right behind him, the lights staying on. Stephen shut off the bike, planted his feet on the ground, and did his damnedest not to panic. Every fiber of his body told him to gun the engine and try to escape, to run into the woods and hide, to teleport away and take his chances on where he ended up. Though he had no reason to fear the police, he had developed an amazing fear of being stranded in isolated places with people he didn't know.

Stephen bowed his head, mentally preparing for the worst—whatever that may be. At the crunch of the officer's footsteps, he straightened up and turned, a polite, "Is there a problem, Officer?" on his lips. The question died when he recognized the detective he'd met in the parking lot. The man's peppered brown hair rustled in the breeze and he walked with the confident gait of a person who knew that everything was going his way.

"Stephen, isn't it?" the detective asked. "Would you mind showing me your license and registration?"

Under his visor, Stephen closed his eyes and fought down a wave of hysteria. A truck rumbled past; the driver acknowledged Stephen's predicament with a toot of his horn.

"The motorcycle belongs to Oliver," Stephen explained, doing his best to keep his voice steady against the pit of wrongness growing in his chest. To buy himself a few seconds—not that they would help—he slowly pulled the visor off and hung it from one of the handlebars, then began patting down his pockets. "I... think I left my wallet at home," he lied, as if he was just now discovering its absence. His captors had taken it, of course, along with his phone.

"Now that's unfortunate," the detective drawled. His eyes swept Stephen up and down, assessing, calculating. It unnerved Stephen how much confidence the detective had in his perception. "Because I think that you don't have a valid driver's license."

Stephen winced in guilt, and it was only after he saw the look of satisfaction settle over the detective's face that he realized the accusation was fishing. "Oliver was just teaching me..."

The detective nodded, a suspicion once more confirmed. "Where is Oliver, by the way?" He didn't take his eyes off Stephen, which was even more disconcerting than the way he talked like he knew all the answers already. "I saw him drive past here like a bat out of hell some time ago. I would have stopped him, but then I remembered that you were still back there," the detective added with a wave of his hand in the direction that Stephen had come from.

Stephen's stomach sank; this pull over had been _planned_. No way was Stephen going to be able to talk his way out of this one. Instead, he started to laugh.

"Is something funny?" the detective asked.

Though Stephen shook his head 'no,' he couldn't stop laughing. All the frustration and anger and tamped down fear from the day welled up at once and tore out of his mouth in harsh, ragged laughs that sounded an awful lot like sobs. It wasn't long before his stomach and sides were cramping and he found himself bowed over the handlebars of the bike with tears rolling down his cheeks.

The detective had more to say, but Stephen had passed beyond the ability to listen. In a vague way, he was aware that he was sitting at the side of the road, out in the open where anyone could see him, and laughing like a person who had smoked way too much weed. He had no idea how he was going to explain this to his mother, much less if she would even give him the chance. With all of the trouble he'd already caused for her, he knew that she didn't have any patience or goodwill saved for him if he crossed the line into being a criminal.

The next thing he was fully aware of was being escorted into the backseat of the patrol car, a hand on his head both pushing him down and guiding him through the low opening. The backseat was dark and small, without enough room for his legs, so Stephen was forced to sit at an angle. The air was close and smelled of hot plastic, alcohol, and vomit. He tried to hold his breath, but all that did was convert the gasps of laughter into hiccups.

The car door slammed shut. Stephen jumped, a violent hiccup ripping through him at the same time. If his face weren't already red with heat, he would have blushed.

"...to the station," the detective stated as he slid into the driver's seat. "You and I can have ourselves a little chat while we're waiting for your parents to show up." He picked up the radio. "Now we're just call to get the bike impounded until a _licensed _driver can come claim it." He made the call, sounding only too happy to do so, and put the car in gear.

In the backseat, Stephen bowed his head and sunk in on himself smaller in the vain hope that the detective would forget his was there. He'd never been in a police car before, and it turned out that being treated like a criminal was just as humiliating as he had expected. The fact that he hadn't really done anything _wrong _only made it worse. At the most, he should have gotten a warning and a slap on the wrist.

The detective was clearly using him to get to Oliver. Stephen didn't need to read the man's mind now to see his agenda. In the few minutes of interaction he'd witnessed between the detective and his cousin, the one thing that had been made abundantly clear was that Oliver was determined to keep his secret identity from the detective and that Detective Lance knew that Oliver was hiding something important.

Which made is all the odder when the detective settled back in the driver's seat, like he was chauffeuring Stephen on a meandering Sunday drive, and commented, "Did you know that Oliver and my daughter used to date?"

"No?" Stephen answered, his brow creasing as he tried to work out why this bit of information was being shared. It had sounded like an accusation, but an accusation about what he couldn't figure out.

"They grew up together. I've known Oliver his whole life."

"OK?" Stephen asked, still waiting, still getting the sense that he was supposed to apologize or explain, or something.

"I don't know you. Moira Queen has never mentioned a sister. Looking at you, it's obvious that you and Queen are related, so I figure you're not lying about that. Then again, you being a Queen relative just makes me wonder more: What's your story?" The detective peered at him via the rear view mirror and Stephen sunk lower in his seat so that he wouldn't be able to see the man watching him.

A loud hiccup saved him from giving anything away with his expression. "We're the poor relatives, and we're just visiting. I don't have a story worth listening to," he answered, the lie rolling surprisingly easily off his tongue. The car rattled as it passed over a series of potholes on the chewed up road. The detective continued to stare at Stephen—somehow able to drive without looking at the road—and Stephen felt like he'd given an answer that was inadequate or wrong. He squirmed, hiccupped again. "My mom had some time off work and she thought we should reconnect with our family."

"Reconnect? Why?"

Stephen shrugged. "I don't know. All the cool stories are kept from us kids, you know. She wanted to visit, so here I am."

"And Oliver was just giving you a tour of his favorite abandoned places to hang out?" the detective pressed.

Stephen shrugged again. He didn't recognize this part of town at all, couldn't place any of the street names as ones he'd ever heard of. On the other hand, the police car drove past no fewer than three coffee shops in two blocks.

"Oliver's changed a lot," the detective commented, again sounding like he was making an accusation.

_No shit, _Stephen wanted to say. He bit his tongue and kept it to himself. He was in enough trouble as it was. "I guess," he said, instead.

"You're not from Starling City, are you?" the detective asked, switching conversational directions so fast that Stephen felt mental whiplash.

Before Stephen could answer, the radio screeched with an incoming call. Between the police language and the hiccups that still convulsed his body and blocked his hearing, the alert from dispatch sounded like gibberish to him.

What he did hear clearly was a single phrase in the detective's thoughts: "A body."

His head snapped up, both at the recognition of how strong that thought must have been for his exhausted telepathy to pick it up and at the phrase itself. The next words from dispatch also came through clearly like Stephen was meant to hear them: Male, Caucasian, about 16 years old, hands and feet bound.

The description could have been _him_, Stephen realized. If not for Oliver, it might have been him. He rubbed at the chafe marks on his wrists from where the ties had cut into his skin as a chill crawled over him.

"Well, kiddo-" The detective glanced over his shoulder at Stephen, for the first time looking at him with sympathy. "-it looks like we've got a change of plans. Sit tight." With that, he flipped on the lights and the siren and pushed his foot to the floor.

Only later did Stephen pinpoint that moment to when his hiccups stopped.

* * *

_A/N: While htbthomas is always an excellent beta, she really earned the high praise with this chapter. She took a look at, what I thought was, the finished version and told me to rewrite it, then rewrite it again. Any remaining mistakes are mine. I am a story-tinkerer, so if you spot anything wrong, please point it out so I can fix it. Thanks :)_


	4. Chapter 4

Oliver slammed the basement door of his headquarters shut behind him.

The ride back to Verdant, his club, had given Oliver time to think, time to let a little of his anger toward his cousin's revelation burn itself down. In part, this was because the farther away Oliver got from the twerp, the easier to was to convince himself that Stephen had, in no way, done what he claimed. Read minds? Powers like that were hard enough to swallow without what Oliver had seen, though he'd seen enough to only be skeptical toward the "how" rather than the "if." The idea that Stephen had read _Oliver's _mind was a step too far, though. Like everything else about himself post-Island, everything Oliver did and thought and felt was tightly controlled because he couldn't afford for it to be otherwise. There was no way that someone could have been poking around in his head without his knowing it.

His anger diminishing, however, did not mean that it had burned itself out.

Felicity was scowling at the spread of monitors that were her workstation. Her blonde ponytail hung askew, like she'd been tugging on it, and her shoulders were as tight with tension as his own. Without even acknowledging her, Oliver headed to his punching bag and unleashed all his frustration in an upper-cut that resonated through the basement with a solid thunk. The bag rocked back, its support trembling. Barely had the bag swung back when he pummeled again it with a series of powerful jabs and crosses. The sting the impact brought to his bare knuckles grounded him in a way that little else could. Back-hand, elbow strike, cross, cross, jab.

What was he missing? Stephen had been snatched off the street while out jogging. A couple hours later, the kidnappers had called the Queen household with a ransom demand. That part was straightforward enough. Even 'why Stephen' seemed obvious, until Oliver considered what he'd learned about his cousin. A bead of sweat dripped into his eye. With a flick of his head, he dismissed it, not once slowing or halting in his assault on the punching bag. Left hook, right hook, cross. His breath was coming faster, though not from exertion. Why had Stephen been taken?

And why had he pretended to need saving?

Oliver's well-earned paranoia told him that the whole thing had been a setup to get to _him_. Except that didn't make sense, either, because then why would Stephen have stepped in to protect him from Lance? Why would Stephen have shared what he could do at all?

His next swing was blocked, his fist hitting a surface more pliable and warmer than a punching bag. Oliver looked in confusion at the dark mass that appeared to be absorbing his hand before realizing that it belonged to the much larger mass that was his friend, confidant, and bodyguard. John Diggle cranked Oliver's arm around in a swift move that would have pinned a smaller or less-trained man. Oliver twisted out of Diggle's control and took a step back, his fists coming up in a challenge that had nothing to do with loosing frustration.

The expression written on Diggle's face stilled Oliver. The lines that marred his normally smooth forehead and the resolve burned into his brown eyes were those of a person with bad news. "I'm sorry, Oliver." He lifted his palms in a gesture that could have been meant to block an attack, or to stall one. "We just found out." Swallowing hard, he continued, voice lower, "I'm sure you did everything you could."

Oliver looked askance at his friend. "I did," he agreed, brows furrowing. The damp basement air felt thick with tension. "The situation got-."

"Oliver," Felicity interrupted. She swiveled on her desk chair to face him. Even from this distance, he could see that her eyes were red with repressed tears. "We thought...You said...Oh, god..." She trailed off, her hands coming up to cover her mouth, and her gaze dropped to the cement floor.

Looking back to Diggle, Oliver lowered his fists and forced his fingers to unclench. "What's going on? What happened?" The way his friends were acting was too familiar, the wounds through his soul from past losses still so raw that he'd never be able to mistake his friends' hesitance for anything else: Something had happened to someone he loved and they didn't know how to tell him. His thoughts flashed through the short list of possibilities. Laurel? Thea?

His mother?

He took a step closer to Felicity. As imposing as he could be, as threatening, she wasn't fazed. Her shoulders twitched through her pink sweater and he could see the gouge marks in her palms from where her fingernails had dug in, but her reaction wasn't to him.

She murmured something—half apology, half sympathy—that he didn't hear. Behind her, the monitors glowed with the displays from the sources she'd been perusing when he came in. Over her shoulder he could see a blog headline in large letters: "Dead Teen." The rest was cut off, hidden at the angle he was standing.

"We'll find out who did it and make them pay," Diggle stated, his tone flat. The words filtered into Oliver's consciousness as if disconnected from any context or meaning, and it took him a moment to connect them to what he was seeing. "Whatever you can tell us..."

As he moved closer, more of the blog's story came into view. Though he couldn't yet to read the text, the picture beneath the headline showed a shot of the Starling City marina. It was a stock shot, one not related to the headline except to supply establishing information. Even so, the remembered scent of rotting fish and diesel fuel filled his nose.

Despite the efforts of the marina's owners and the Starling City tourism department, the marina had a dark streak to its reputation: drugs, extortion, and trafficking of all varieties occurred under the decks of the boats that used the docks there.

Corpses, too, had been known to surface. The occasional murder. Suicides. Sometimes, accidental deaths from people making bad decisions around water—or, so the official story was recorded.

Oliver knew more about the seedy side of city's water denizens than most people could even begin to guess.

"Hands and feet bound together," he read, the words jumping out from the surrounding text as if they'd been enhanced just for him to see. "Shot once in the head."

If there was a picture of the victim, it was on a part of the screen that he'd have to scroll down to see. Regardless, he knew what picture he _wouldn't _see. And he suddenly understood why his teammates were acting the way they were.

With a gesture at the screen, he said, "That's not about Stephen."

"What?" Felicity asked. She straightened up so fast that the chair rocked. "Oliver? Are you sure? I mean, the article came in...and all the details...and then you came back so upset..." She bit her lip and stopped talking, waiting for Oliver to respond.

"He's alive," Oliver spat. "I saved him." He spun around, running his hand up over the back of his head. The short hair bristled under his touch. "That story's about a different kid." Who had been tied up the same way Stephen had been when Oliver'd found him, which meant the kidnappers were killers, as well as repeat offenders.

Which meant that Stephen's kidnapping had probably never been about the ransom money.

Which meant that Stephen may have been the victim, after all.

Unless he was orchestrating the deaths of other kids just to bolster his own cover—and even Oliver had a hard time believing that about his cousin.

A grunt of exasperation escaped Oliver's mouth and he again felt his fingers curling with the anticipated need to punch something.

Diggle's jaw tensed, his brown eyes hardened. Oliver could see him struggling to give the benefit of the doubt to Oliver's sanity. "Are you sure?"

"He's alive," Oliver repeated. He mentally ran through the events of the afternoon, trying to figure out how to summarize them in a way that wouldn't confirm to his friends what they already suspected about his mental health. The mere fact of his alternate identity already pushed the line of what they were willing to tolerate from him; he could only count himself lucky that they had agreed to help his cause instead of trying to save him, and he couldn't damage that now. "We got out of the building and got away. I went back to deal with the kidnappers." That seemed simple enough so far as an explanation, with the benefit of being true. However, he knew it wouldn't be long before Felicity brought up the glitch in his boot tracker again. "By the time I got back, they were gone, so I came here."

Crossing his arms, Diggle took in the slacks and polo shirt that Oliver had on, and his expression grew even more wary. "Didn't you have your Hood gear on when you left?"

Oliver nodded. "I had to ditch it along the way. Ran into Lance."

Diggle's eyebrows went up. "That's a strange piece to leave out of the story. Did...both of you survive this run-in?"

The ringing of his phone interrupted Oliver's answer. He glanced at the display, noted the name of the caller, and then held the phone up for Diggle to see. "If he didn't, then he's figured out how to call from beyond the grave. Not that I'd put that past him." Pushing the on button, he answered, "This is Queen," reaching for his best bored playboy voice.

"I have your cousin down at the docks," Lance responded, without any preamble. "You're going to come down here and get him."

With a sigh that Oliver didn't even try to keep to himself, he asked, "What kind of trouble did he get into now?"

"Let's start with driving without a license," Lance responded. A scraping noise obscured the phone signal, then Oliver heard Lance's muffled voice talking to someone in the background. When he came back online a moment later, he sounded weary. "Look, Queen, I don't have time to get into it. I have a murdered kid down here to investigate and a different kid who doesn't belong at a crime scene. His mother isn't picking up her phone, so I called you. Despite what _I _think, the law does recognize you as a responsible adult."

Oliver looked around at his friends, both of whom were watching him, their curiosity to hear Lance's side of the conversation so strong on their faces that he had to give them something. He offered a slight shrug and splay of his unoccupied hand like he couldn't believe what Lance was saying. That Felicity had thought to patch into the call surprised him. "He's probably safer with you," Oliver suggested. "A little tough love should straighten him right out."

A gust of breath into the receiver crackled the connection. "Try me a different day, Queen. Until then, if you don't come pick up your cousin, I will charge _you _with interfering with police business," Lance snarled, and the line went dead.

For a couple moments, Oliver regarded the phone and the number that was still displayed on the screen. Hitting the end button—just in case—he pocketed the device. "Stephen's with Lance down at the docks. I have to go pick him up."

"Detective Lance?" Felicity asked.

"Stephen," Oliver corrected. He crossed to stand behind her, his eyes already sweeping the computer monitors for anything useful that she might have left unguarded. His steps echoed through the open space. "Speaking of which, did you find out anything else about him?"

Felicity narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms, for the moment, at least, unwilling to jump to his requests. "There's something going on here that doesn't add up. Maybe even lots of somethings." She held the glare, her fingers gripping into the sweater's weave while trying to wear down his defenses with the power of her will. Oliver stood his ground and stared back. In only a few seconds, his eyes began to dry and he had to steel himself not to blink. He refused to give in, and so did she.

With a sudden awareness that made her bounce in the chair—and that broke the standoff—Felicity announced, "You know more than you're telling us."

Rubbing his eyes, concentration momentarily broken, Oliver volleyed back, "I'm never going to tell you everything. A good relationship always has some secrets." The comment was out before he had a chance to think it through. Rather than try to take it back, he ignored the blush that had sprung into Felicity's cheeks—as well as the fact that Felicity probably needed to know everything he'd learned so she could do her research properly—and reached over her shoulder toward the keyboard. As expected, she swatted his hand out of the way and closed herself around in the keyboard in the clearest _mine _gesture he'd ever seen.

"How about we start with what you figured out?" Oliver asked. "Bring me up to speed."

Felicity hesitated a moment longer, then swung into action with her usual eagerness to share her findings. "How well do you know your cousin?"

"I haven't seen him in five years, if that's what you mean," Oliver responded wryly.

The blush deepened until she turned back to the monitors where their pale light washed the color away. "So this is the interesting thing. I've been digging into his history like you asked. He's only a teenager, so you wouldn't think there'd be a lot on him. But he's a teenager of the digital generation, and most of them have massive electronic footprints."

"Are you going somewhere with this?" Oliver asked. "I have to get down to the docks before Lance sends a squad car to find me."

"Actually, yes." Felicity smiled and tapped the keyboard. A Facebook profile popped up on one screen.

The profile was mostly whitespace and requests to fill in information. The picture was a blurry, partial profile of someone who could be any white teenager. Oliver only recognized it was Stephen because of how close they'd been over the last couple of hours. "That's his?"

"Yes. Well, no. But yes."

"Felicity?"

"This wasn't what his page looked like when I first pulled it up." She gestured at the screen. "For starters, his page was wide open for anyone to see. Not that there was much _to _see. Even my Facebook page is less socially depressing." She rolled her lips together, pursed them thoughtfully, then shook her head. "This page is what I found when I went _back. _It was locked down tight and all of the info on it was erased. Now, unless your cousin has suddenly become worried about online privacy, this is really weird."

"Could it be a coincidence? Maybe he got a little spooked." Diggle asked. He had come in to flank Felicity's other side while she and Oliver were talking. The three of them standing together like this sapped some of the tension from Oliver and he leaned in even closer to them.

"That was my first thought, too," Felicity answered. "Then I started to wonder. It seems a lot like closing the barn door after the horse has died." She flinched and cast a sideways glance at Oliver. "Or, in this case, after the horse has been captured and is being held hostage. I mean, if I were in that situation, the last thing I'd be using my cellphone for is _erasing _my online profile. I'd be tweeting 911s to everyone I knew.

Oliver nodded. Though he was still getting up-to-speed to the sheer proliferation of social media that had taken over while he'd been away, the wisdom of calling for help made sense no matter what method was used. The way Stephen's hands had been bound, though, would have prevented any use of his cellphone, even if he had been able to get it out of his pocket.

Then again, after the rescue, Stephen had been back at the mansion by himself. He could have done anything in that time.

"So someone did it for him," Oliver concluded. "He has an accomplice."

"Sure," Felicity answered. "But why? So I dug a little deeper." She hit a key and the screen changed. Oliver had to squint to see the tiny letters contained in the screen capture pictured on it. "This was sent to him right around the time that your boot locator glitched." Again, she gestured at the screen, though this time Oliver caught her peering at him from the corner of her eye while she spoke. She really was not going to leave that alone.

To keep from getting sucked into explaining what had happened during the "glitch," he read out the cellphone text message that Felicity was pointing to. "'I've started fumigating. I will let you know when the air is clear.'" While he let the message sink in, his eye skipped up the screen, noting the date and time of the send as well as the sender's name. "Who's Tim?" Another detail sunk in, and he set one hand on the back of Felicity's chair, while he confirmed that he wasn't reading wrong. "And why doesn't he have a last name?"

"Those," Felicity answered, "are both excellent questions."

"It sounds like a code," Diggle interrupted. "Not a very good one either. Fumigating? You said this message was sent right before the Facebook page was erased?"

Felicity nodded.

"Did this 'Tim' say anything else?" Diggle asked. "Did Stephen respond?"

"No, that's the only message Stephen has received all day," Felicity answered. She swept a loose tendril of hair behind her ear and scowled as it promptly fell back across her nose. "Did I mention that he doesn't seem to have much of a social life?"

"So we need to find out who Tim is," Oliver stated. With a glance at his watch, and a cringe at how long this short conversation had already taken up, he added, "And I need to get going." He straightened up and swung his arms back, seeking to loosen muscles that had gone from active use to unmoving with no warm down. His shirt stretched taut with each swing.

Next to him, Diggle murmured something in Felicity's ear, then stood up as well. "I'll drive."

"I've got the bike," Oliver argued.

"The more we learn about what's going on, the less we know." He stabbed a finger Oliver's direction. "_Your _story has so many holes in it that even a slumlord would complain. I get nervous when the intel doesn't add up. So, I'm going to drive, and you're going to fill us in on everything that happened. Everything you found out." He headed toward the door, his solid step and confident posture that of a man leading the troops and having no doubt that they would follow.

Oliver rolled his eyes. It wouldn't be hard to give Diggle the slip once they were outside. Then again, he had picked up a few clues about who the kidnappers might be. "Fine," he agreed.

"I'll just keep plugging away," Felicity offered from behind them. She sounded more excited about the task than a person getting left alone in an empty basement should. "This Tim has just met his—or her—match. I'm going to find out everything he never wanted me to know."


End file.
